Matt Hilton - Cut and run

There was also a guard.

He was a big man with a network of scars all over his face. He looked like he'd been in a fire once over and had suffered greatly. That's what comes of cooking your own crack, Rickard thought, as he fired at the man. The guy threw himself down behind a counter and returned fire with an old-fashioned Colt revolver. His shots were blind, and Rickard dodged away from the line of fire even as he rushed towards the man. He leaned over the counter and drilled the man full of bullets, watching the man's eyelids flicker as each round punched holes in his upper body. Then there was no more reaction and the man slumped down.

Rickard left him there and went back out into the hall.

That made three dead inside the house; which meant there had to be more than he'd originally reckoned. None of the men he'd killed looked like anyone that could have snared Alisha's attention.

The next room he checked was a bedroom. The only thing that told him so was the presence of a stained mattress propped up against a wall. The rest of the room was devoid of home comforts and it seemed to have become a repository for old newspapers and girlie magazines.

On his left a closet door stood open. He glanced inside to ensure nobody lurked in the dark space and found it empty. Moving on, he found the door that let outside where he'd clambered up on to the porch. The door wasn't as heavily fortified as the front door, having only a beam nestled in brackets to hold it firm. He paid it little attention, choosing instead to move immediately to the remaining room. Whoever was inside had fallen silent now, but he guessed that was where he'd find Alisha and her ex-boyfriend.

He wanted a personal reckoning with Alisha. He'd teach her what it meant to betray him, but first he wanted to show her the true value of her ex-lover. He wanted to kill him personally too, although not at the expense of walking into a trap. He shoved his gun into his waistband and transferred the Scorpion to his right hand. He braced his wrist against his hip, then let loose the full fury of the gun, firing through walls and door alike. The bullets cut through the flimsy barricade and into the room beyond. Then he dropped the gun and burst open the door and followed inside. As he did he pulled out his ceramic blade and thumbed it open.

He was surprised by what he found: a lone man sitting with his back to a wall. No sign of Alisha. The man was dressed a little snappier than the guards he'd already killed, and he was young and handsome with a full head of wavy hair. He was the tall man who had met Alisha at the door. He was lightly tanned, but some of the colour had drained out of his features, making him look slick and pasty. Rickard glanced at the bullet wound in the man's gut. The man had one hand clamped over it to staunch the flow of blood, while his other hand still gripped the stock of a Glock 18. The man rolled his head up to stare at Rickard and though he was in agony he still mustered enough hatred to make his eyes flash.

Rickard lunged in quickly and jammed a heel down on the man's gun hand.

'Where is my wife?'

The young man twisted, trying to free his gun, but Rickard only pushed down harder with his heel.

'I asked you a question!'

'Fuck you!'

'Once more: where is my wife?'

'Gone, asshole. You're too late.'

Rickard heard movement behind him and recognised it as someone removing the beam from the brackets on the side door. Alisha making a break for it. He scolded himself for not checking behind the damn mattress in the bedroom he'd passed, but it was too late for recriminations now. Alisha wouldn't get far before he could catch her again. He had time to make this man sorry for sticking his nose in his business.

'Then that means you're no use to me any more,' he said. He slashed with the knife and opened up the man's throat. It was a calculated cut that sliced his trachea wide but missed the major blood vessels. The man would die, but it would take minutes and he had no hope of screaming for help.

Rickard leaned down and took the Glock from the man's fingers. He stepped slowly off the pinioned hand and watched as the man grasped at his throat. The gut shot was forgotten as he tried to stem his life from ebbing away.

Rickard turned away, left the man to die in silent torment and went back into the hall. Glancing into the bedroom he saw that the mattress was now lying on the floor – so Alisha had been hiding there – and the door to the outside was wide open. Again he felt a trickle of admiration that Alisha was proving more worthy than he'd ever have thought, but it was only fleeting. It wouldn't stop him from making her scream in agony. He went outside, switching the Glock to automatic fire.

'There are reports of shots fired,' Harvey said. 'You'd better haul ass, guys. Cops are responding to nine-one-one calls, so they'll be going in hard.'

'Not far now,' I said. I put away my phone and checked my gun.

Rink drove the Chrysler like a crazy man, laying his hand heavily on the horn to clear a passage through traffic that seemed to have been sent by Rickard's guardian angel to thwart us. We lost a mirror and gained a few stripes of gleaming metal in the paintwork, and more than a couple people screamed obscenities at us as we squeezed by. But we were still ahead of the blue lights and sirens heading in the same direction.

We got on to surface streets that gave us a cleaner run into Liberty City, and Rink now lay heavily on the throttle. We shot through at high speed and I was only happy that it was a school day and there weren't children out playing in the road. Keeping one eye on the way ahead, I counted off the blocks on my right.

'Two blocks,' I indicated and Rink nodded in acknowledgement.

Approaching our turn Rink decelerated rapidly, engine compression slowing the vehicle, then took a turn that had the tyres stuttering on the paved road. Then he gave the vehicle everything and we shot like a bullet towards the next intersection.

'Next left.' Rink already knew the way but I felt like I had to say something. Again he took us through a ninety-degree turn at speed, and then it was a straight run along a street that could never be described as a tourist destination. The houses looked different, but I could have been in the council scheme where I'd grown up. Rickard had brought further trouble to a neighbourhood with enough of its own.

Rink braked.

Ahead of us was a scene like a Western gunfight, only here the cowboys had automatic handguns and machine pistols instead of six-guns. I took in the scene in an instant.

One man in a vest and tattoos had his arm propped over the top of a wooden fence. He fired but his shots were ill-timed and most of them got nowhere near where he was aiming.

Two others were crouching behind a car, firing randomly towards the front of a wooden house.

Lying on the road behind the two gunmen was a young woman. She had her arms folded over her head and was screaming in terror.

My attention snapped from the woman to the man walking out as bold as a man of steel from the side of the house. He was holding what looked to me like a Glock 18 and he fired off short bursts of bullets directly through the body of the car the two gunmen were behind. The vehicle was no protection and I saw one of the men spin away, shrieking as he clutched at his side. The other man took flight, throwing himself backwards and trying to scuttle away across the road. The man with the Glock continued advancing, but he angled his aim at the man behind the fence. The gun stuttered and a stitch-pattern of rounds cut through the fence, a right-to-left oblique angle that almost cut the tattooed man in half.

I had no memory of jumping out the Chrysler and running. Somewhere along the way I'd racked my SIG. I shouted wordlessly and saw the young woman's face come up. She stared at me, and something in her face made me wonder why I caused her to jerk in fear. Maybe it was the gun in my hand, or more likely it was because I looked so much like the man stalking towards her on the other side of the vehicle. I looked across at him and got a good look at Rickard for the first time.